I will comfortably say that Andruw Jones’ legacy is forever tarnished, especially in the case of LA fans. He will never be able to get past what he did (or didn’t do) last season. After signing a two-year deal for around $36 million, he showed up to camp in horrible shape, easily 250-plus pounds, and just unprepared to play baseball. I have said that being fat doesn’t have a negative impact on ballplayers and I still believe that. It’s just that Jones clearly wasn’t ready to play and was essentially stealing money from the club. His negative play on the field just kept spiraling and spiraling to the point where he was getting booed so consistently he never turned things around. He strung together one of the worst, if not the worst, regular seasons by a position player all-time. For that, he finally apologized (to Plaschke in the LA Times):
“Are you saying you’re sorry?”
“Yes, you could put it that way,” he says. “Yes, in fact, put it exactly that way.”
“Put it what way?”
“I am sorry I didn’t stand up to my reputation,” he says. “I am sorry for what I put everyone through. I am sorry I did not make it work.”
Andruw admitted that he heard the boos all season long and that they really did bother him. He also confessed that he wasn’t really injured when he got placed on the DL at the end of the year, just that he really needed to get away from it all. Now that he’s only making 500k from the Rangers and has an incentive-driven contract, he’s trying to get back into normal shape. Clearly Jones failed to realize that baseball careers are precious in that they don’t last very long. He had the rest of his life to enjoy his millions, getting fat and lazy. The prime of his career was not the right time to get a head start.
